Friday, March 13, 2015

Stem cells: Ethical or Immoral?

Stem cells are a specific type of cell in your body that is unspecialized, this means that they transform into any cell in your body whether its heart, brain, skin, liver etc. they can change into it. There are three types of stem cells embryonic, adult and the induced pluripotent stem cells. Embryonic stem cells come from the embryo, placenta and umbilical cord. They have the ability to change into any stem cell in your body these are the purest form of stem cell, you can use a syringe to extract them from the umbilical cord, placenta and embryo. But to get stem cells from the embryo you must destroy it. Adult stem cells are less flexible then embryonic stem cells. If they are a stem cell from the kidney they cannot change into anything but kidney cells. The last type of stem cells are the induced pluripotent stem cells. These are adult stem cells that have been reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells.To get stem cells you must either find them in the adult body or take them from the embryo which is controversial because you have to destroy the embryo. This has started many protests and arguments because people think that all life is started once the sperm meets the egg but and scientists claim that the baby would not have survived anyway because they grow an embryo in a glass container. This could potentially extend the human lifespan by many years but the question is is that good or bad for the population? This could be good because people would be living longer and that is great but since people would be staying on the earth longer we risk overpopulating it.In my opinion i think that anything that could help humanity as a whole is good for the population but I also think that we should know our limits and not try to burst through them. We should not play god with these cells but we should try to do some good with them like cure diseases and fix other problems.